March 20, 2011

Happy solstice and extra large full moon! I’ve heard that the moon is as close in physical distance right now as it ever gets. On top of that last week’s earthquake shifted the earth axis, narrowed the Pacific Ocean by 13 feet and slightly compressed the Earth’s shape so that we are now spinning ever so slightly faster.

This week also marked the memorial services of two people who have effected my view of Inclusion – Wolf Wolfensberger and Marilyn Ferrell.

I felt shaken in my core this week. It’s not that anything particularly good or bad happened, but just the same, it felt like some kind of reorganization.

Outwardly the signs of this are that my circle met today and I ensured that we did not talk about my health or my needs, but about how I am groping to reorganize my life so that I can integrate and balance all of the commitments that are trying to happen to put Inclusion and Peace deeply into the conversation of the world. To use a biblical phrase, this week has been about girding myself to conduct the big fight, the big push.

Mike and I counted my commitments, not such an easy task because they do overlap quite a bit with each other. In the end we decided on twelve:

1. The ROM Exhibit
2. Laser Eagles
3. The Book of Judith
4. Zombie Video Game Research & Development
5. Making WPIT a genuine presence
6. BMX Model Research
7. Health & Well Being
8. Wisdom City Team
9. My Staffing
10. Weaning myself off ODSP
11. Having Individualized Funding Extended
12. The Book and Getting it Published

All these things together will bring about the capacity of my colleagues and I to deeply embed a new conversation about Inclusion. Anything less will have me and our efforts unstable in some way. So in a very real way it’s all or nothing at this time.

Of course, this is the way it looks right now. Expect in the near future it will consolidate into a simplified version of this picture. The genuinely core issues will emerge and it will be clear how to empower all of it through a few key efforts.

It is also clear that I and we really need project management and a project co-ordinator. These things are necessary to engage as many people as possible and keep as many efforts going as possible all at the same time.

What has shifted is my level of certainty. This is what must be and can be.

February 1, 2011

Well I’m going to do one of those short cuts again. I am going to copy over an article that I wrote for Jay Klein’s class – University of Phoenix. It is a social work class, mostly done online, and my articles and comments on their discussion will be posted next week. This is probably the fourth time that I have done this class with Jay in this way.

Jay and I go back to the mid 80’s. As luck or life would have it Jay has run into many barriers in the university systems that he has been part of – three in all. This has brought him to building a partnership with some techno folks who happen to be interested both in Inclusion and in video games. It’s just possible that we are going to be able to mount a research project to study the impact of our video game on the inclusive behaviour of the players. All very academic, I know. It may however give me my chance – finally – to run the BMX Model of Inclusion through some real life experiences by real people to see if it’s useful as a descriptor and predictor of inclusive situations. If it IS then there is a real basis to build forward action from a solid researched base.

I know many who read this wouldn’t care that much. However, money tends to follow the researchers and studies are often used to back people who have a chance to make a real change. I think we deserve to have a chance at this kind of position, so I am going to continue to go for it.

Here is the article:

Hello

Some of you will already have a good sense of who I am, from the course materials, Google and/or You Tube. We will probably never meet in person and be a part of each other's real world. In a way I wish we could meet face-to-face so I would get to find out who you are and what you would really like to know from and about me. Just the same this is a wonderful way to have a dialogue from one country (Canada) to another. I am hopeful that you and I will get very engaged in this activity.

Here are my opening thoughts.
In our language we speak of relationships as if they were things we have, or don't have. We say things like: "I have a car, two cats and five relationships." In reality relationships are what we are. I am one person with my mother, a somewhat different person with my father, a very different person with my best friend, yet another different person with my boss, and so on. There is no "I" that exists alone - solitary. I am a being that is revealed in the context of other "I's".

We also speak about disability as if it were a thing. We say things like: "I have an apartment, a computer and a disability." This is just as misleading as saying I "have" relationships.

Disability is not real in a concrete sense. Disability can only exist where people have a social agreement about the way some people's bodies and/or minds exist in the world. In particular the culture "already knows" that there are ways that people should never be in their bodies, minds and emotions.

Anyone who knows someone well who has been labeled disabled has had the experience of the disability disappearing. That is, in certain environments and under some conditions the same person with the same abilities will go from seeming to be odd and needy to seeming to being very recognizable and capable. The same person suddenly is OK and "just like me really except a little different."

Creating a world where diversity is appreciated and fostered – creating Inclusion – is much more than doing and saying some things differently. Inclusion is a philosophy, a belief system. Inclusion is about having the world be a place where everyone's abilities matter and are built into everything that is happening in the social and economic community. In inclusive society everyone is a contributor. The whole range of ability is seen as capacity.

If we come to truly believe in Giftedness – that is that difference leads to opportunities that can benefit everyone – then we must notice that some actions and some language works against opportunity and participation and some support it. The language and actions related to the idea of disability work against Inclusiveness and Giftedness.

The good news is that we don’t need the concept of disability at all. With some work, self reflection, dialogue and change of action disability as a concept and as a practice can disappear.

When disability disappears it is because something about a person's usual and unusual differences has become a contribution to the social and economic network of relationships. When people experience that difference leads to capacity they welcome the broad range of skills and abilities that can occur among human beings.

This week the course invites you to look at diverse capacity as a natural part of being alive in relationship. People who have been labeled disabled bring both usual and unusual capacities to the networks of relationships that make up our communities.
Please watch the video, “Working with Judith Snow”. Please read the three attached articles: "Prologue and "The Story" (Prologue.pdf)", "Community Is Not A Place But A Way Of Life", (Community.pdf), and "Notes On The Gifts And Assets that People Who Are Vulnerable To Rejection Commonly Bring To Community" (Gifts.pdf, see below)." After absorbing these three please communicate your thoughts, reactions, questions, disagreements, and points of agreement via this threaded discussion.

Here are some suggestions to help start your discussion. You could discuss:
1) Your initial thoughts or reaction.
2) What made you feel good and what bothered you?
3) What is the message about the power of relationships and of language?
4) What is being expressed that is relevant to you and the work that you do?
5) What is the message of Inclusion?
6) What will you do differently after this week of study?

I am looking forward to interacting with you.

Have a great course.

Judith Snow


Gifts Document:

NOTES ON THE GIFTS AND ASSESTS
THAT PEOPLE WHO ARE VULNERABLE TO REJECTION
COMMONLY BRING TO COMMUNITY

Judith A. Snow, MA
January 2011
Hospitality
• making people feel happy
• listening

Grounding
• slowing people down, reorienting people to time and place
• leading people to appreciate simple things
• causing people to appreciate their own abilities

Skill Building
• pushing people to be better problem solvers
• causing people to try things they've never done before
• causing people to research things they never encountered before
• improving education
• improving technology
• modeling perseverance - being unstoppable

Networking
• reaching out to people and breaking down barriers
• asking questions that everyone else is too shy to ask
• bringing people together who otherwise would never meet

Economic
• providing jobs to people who want supplemental income, like artists
• providing jobs to people who need to work odd schedules like homemakers
• providing jobs to people who otherwise have few or no marketable skills
• filling odd niches
• providing a home, bringing people home

Emotional/Spiritual
• often modeling exemplary forgiveness
• offering opportunities to do something that clearly makes a difference
• reorienting values from accumulation to relationships
• making people more peaceful

January 22, 2011

I am about to prepare the proposal that I will put before the ED of the Atkinson Charitable Foundation (ACF). I recognize that I have a highly emotional response to her request of me. Clearly I am reactivated (or stuck) at more than one level! So, I thought that I would use this blog – this expression vehicle – as a way of writing her a personal letter. Then I could write her the straightforward proposal. I can also suggest that, if she is interested, she read the blog, although that seems pretty risky at the moment. Of course it couldn’t seem so risky if I didn’t feel that much depends on how my working relationship with her turns out, and what each of us is able to accomplish by working together.

I am sure that this is just the sort of thing that Gloria wants me to face and transform in the context of. She is always saying I can’t give anything away, as in permitting others to run with the ball after I have set a direction. I don’t think this is true but I do recognize that I am not the best judge! So these are the words I would say to the new ED who is curious about me, maybe even hopeful about me, and who holds the key to what my next project will look like, perhaps.

Dearest O,

(It always seems that such letters start with “Dear” or “Dearest”)

I have been struggling with how to frame a project to put before you by Monday morning. Saturday evening is about to arrive and I only have the barest outline in my head. I am frustrated, angry and hopeful. I am trained enough to know that I’m not really responding to you, but to a series of former relationships and opportunities both lost and fulfilled which have shaped my life, my understanding of Inclusion and my current “mission” in life. It seems to me that you are interested and that you hold a key to potential progress. However, both my sense of what is a key and what progress is leave me with a feeling that you have undue power over me at this moment. I am reacting to my own “helpless identity” in the face of your “power”.
In the eyes of the world, you are black and I am crippled. We spoke euphemistically about these realities last Wednesday. I explained to you that my relationship to this point with Atkinson has been as a “window washer” – in other words, my circumstances have lead me to a certain kind of work in the world and consequently people imagine both that this is the kind of work I want to do and also that it is the only thing I’m good for. Accordingly, when people want to include me, support me and/or honour me, they offer me another window to wash. This is exactly what I FEEL like you are doing now.

I have been so tempted to ask you if you would like to make some pancakes.

Specifically, I stopped wanting to be an advocate in approximately 1991. I took it up again in order to support the Individualized Funding Coalition of Ontario. In 2004 we were offered an opportunity to “consult” with the Deputy Minister of the Ministry of Community and Social Services in Ontario. I participated fully! I did so because, even though I figured there was very little chance that the work would lead to real policy change, I felt that there needed to be as good as possible a document that recorded for history the benefits of individually supported community participation for people who are labelled with developmental disability.

It is nearly impossible, as you know I am sure, for people to build full participation with minimal resources, including some that are illegally established. Secondly, this power is further diminished by the intense bureaucratic overlay that comes with these resources. Add to this the intensely inadequate capacity to do good research when all that is available to do the work are volunteers, no control group, no standard definition of anything, and tight deadlines to come up with data and analysis. In spite of this, the IFCO managed to produce two reports that each had “eyeball” significance. In other words, you could see by just looking at the data that there are huge differences in how people who have individualized supports participate in their communities versus people who have agency support.

Shortly after we produced this data, the Finance Ministry of the Province of Ontario shut that Deputy Minister down, had him reassigned, and put in place an ineffective puppet. All evidence that the government might move towards individualized support for people who are labelled with developmental disability disappeared overnight.

The hidden consequence of all this, at least hidden to the Ministry, the bureaucrats and well meaning people such as yourself is that the people themselves who are labelled lose at every step of this process. First of all, they lose relationship with their parents and caregivers as these people exhaust themselves with extra work, and the process of being drawn into defining their loved one as a needy disabled person. Secondly, they lose the opportunities that disappear while their caregivers are busy doing other things rather than going out to the library, the park, a volunteer job somewhere, church, etc. etc. Finally, as the bureaucrats dash the hopes of the advocates and burn them out, they lose the energy and commitment of their parents and caregivers – the main source of support in their lives. How many people end up in a worse situation and in group homes just because their parents became advocates and then burnt out? I have no idea what the number is but I am sure that it is not small.

I was not, I believe, turned into a cynic by this defeat, not just because I was expecting defeat but because I knew that people could not be satisfied unless they had tried, and try we did. My intention was to support the effort as best as I could, not imagine that we were somehow going to buck the bureaucracy and actually make a change. At the same time I very much intended to never pick up the banner of advocacy again!

Lo and behold one should never say never! Here comes a very energetic, intelligent and passionate ED who is more than willing to make pancakes. Who am I to say that she is not correct? History has funny turns and I am not the one to say that this is not the time in history when a new voice and new energy might actually shift the social perception of people who have been labelled developmentally disabled.

You remind me so much of an energetic and passionate woman that I met in 1978 who turned my life, and many people’s lives, around. I hated her for a good six months before I fell in love with her and proceeded to do anything she asked of me because somehow around her things really worked out. For example, although we are far from having genuine Inclusive education in Ontario, the bureaucrats have never been able to kill it either, and that has a lot to do with Marsha Forest, who so inspired and so kicked butt that her influence continues 11 years after her death from breast cancer. I can only hope to have such power as Marsha had.

So, you say, it is time to gather the advocates and to have them start talking to each other and to have them begin to create a common identity and a common approach. Do you know that that is exactly what Marsha inspired in our city in 1980 to support our powerful engagement with the system during 1981, the International Year of the Disabled Person? The impact of that conference reverberates to this day in small but fundamental ways.

I can hear Marsha’s voice saying quit your bitching and get writing. This is an opportunity not to be missed.

Alright then – Let’s get on with it! Where’s that pancake recipe?

January 19, 2011

The awaited meeting with the ED of Atkinson Charitable Foundation happened this morning. I was able to organize that Mike Skubic was with me and, much to the ED’s amazement, he and his work on the inclusive video games was very exciting to her. It turns out that she has encountered the Zombie Walk movement, and the whole idea that zombies could be a vehicle for experiencing and teaching Inclusion was a welcome eye-popper. I was a little bit jealous. My whole stuff around the BMX Model of Inclusion is way more serious, significant and unfun!

Afterward, Mike and I had lunch and considered deeply her request. Fundamentally, she is offering both of us a partnership, and some space to invent what that partnership will look like. I am sure I don’t fully understand what she is offering or what her request is. By the end of the meeting I was struggling a bit to shift gears and so lost track of some of what she was saying. Basically, I have been working hard in a certain direction for the last few months and had not seriously considered Atkinson as a "playground". I am more than willing, even thrilled, to work with Atkinson. It's just unexpected!

I am hoping that because of this I can use the BMX Model to work with members of the Inclusion Circle, the Community Advocates that Atkinson funds, the ED herself, and any Atkinson Board members who wish to participate. I want them to describe their personal and organizational situations and issues and to describe strategies they might like to use to move forward.

After, say, six months we could collect the stories and thoughts and together look at where the model is and isn't useful. This will help to tighten up the model or debunk it if it is genuinely useless. Lastly, it might (FINALLY) create a way to connect with the work being done around the Canadian Index of Wellbeing - a result I have been trying to achieve for about three years!!!!

I am thankful to Mike for pushing me beyond my own cynicism. Atkinson has done very little with the Inclusion Circle, and neither did the Laidlaw Foundation before that. It seemed to me that advising these philanthropic organizations created the same kind of exclusion that advocacy does, i.e. it’s just another by-product of M. So my first reaction to her enthusiasm was to get confused and wonder what the heck I could do that would make any difference to what I am entrusted in. By the end of lunch a pathway was much clearer.

By the way, the work of the last week has required me (and us) to articulate the BMX Model more succinctly so here it is:

The BMX Model of Inclusion was created by Judith Snow, WPIT, www.judithsnow.org. It is designed to succinctly capture the multitude of circumstances that people call Inclusion. Its elements are “B” (for Basic), “M” (for Mechanical), and “X” (for Crossover).

At a most Basic level, a country or community allows a group to coexist, but no other changes are offered or made for the group. In the “M” or Mechanical state, the community is willing to make accommodations for the included group—examples might be ESL classes, job training, etc. In the third, Crossover state, both the community and the included recognize that their world benefits from the gifts and contributions of everyone. The perception fades that there are two sides and a distinct boundary. Any human difference can be looked at this way.

The model is useful for more than description. Communities and individuals can use it as a way of analyzing their situations and determining powerful strategies for finding better placement as participants and contributors in their society.
So, yet again, I have a new departure. Like Gloria, I worry that this is an utter waste of time. However, I think I must try this, because after all, supporting and rescuing people one person at a time is just another way of ensuring that basic change never happens.

I am not saying that I know how to make the basic transformation of society happen. I am saying that I am willing and able to keep looking for that way.

January 16, 2011

Within myself and within my circle there is an argument about how to unfold WPIT. By the way I think we are close to changing the name – to something like Include.Me.org.

My certainties are based in some simple stories. They are stories from my own experience. Of course there is nothing unusual about this. All humans build their lives from their experience, their stories within the contexts provided by culture.

The story of my Father and the binding of ancient female children’s feet provides me with certainty that Inclusion can only be built on a foundation of Giftedness. His story of the killing of children with Down Syndrome (when I was 6) gives me the understanding that I have a “mission” and – more recently – that there must be an economic foundation to our approach to Inclusion. My encounter with the reality of God’s love when I was twelve gives me a greater understanding that I have a unique path, and that there will always be a way for me to enjoy my life, be fulfilled and bring about Inclusion. Then there was the day Dad told me to pay attention to where my clean laundry went, and I began to see that I could direct my support, and so the relationships and tasks of the daily life that would be my journey.

I am uncertain where the idea that peace is available through Inclusion comes from. There is no stellar tale. This frustrates me and is perhaps the cause of the slow development of this “project”. In the 80’s and 90’s an aggregate of stories coalesced in my experience and I began to see the potential socio-political transformation that would lead to greater peacefulness as communities became more inclusive.

To me it is not about personal peace although that is tied in and important. It is about cultural peacefulness. After all, the Scotties, Felicias and Eddies are everywhere and if their Giftedness is included powerfully, peace will break out everywhere!

Without a strong story I am not communicating powerfully. So it grows slowly and has weak roots.

I have been looking for a strong enough story. I have been hoping that I could find or build it through research. Apparently this approach is too weak. I must find it more clearly in my own stories and experience.

Perhaps it resides with my Mother. This seems unlikely.

So tonight I commit myself to give birth to a story that links Peace and Inclusion so powerfully that people’s hearts will be opened. Gloria’s message to me tonight is that I will not find that story in research, economics or my head. The story must reach those understandings, but it must be anchored in my heart.

Right now the story is simply missing. There clearly a space and a need for it, but where the story should be – in my mouth and heart – there is simply silence. Of course, silence – my silence – is the perfect place to begin the exploration! The path has always been linked to silence.

Perhaps tomorrow I will meet the person who will show me where the story lies within me.

January 15, 2011

I had wine with dinner – a fabulous duck dinner at the King Eddy – supplied by Peter Christianson. A few hours later I took Morphine because the left foot pain just wasn’t abating – the first dose in six days. In any case the inebriation may come through.

I am learning to play with and get used to the person I am becoming, which is an internationally oriented player with power. I must rapidly – am rapidly giving up that I am a small actor in a big show.

It has come up four times this week.

The first was with the agenda published by Second Story Press. I started to read the vignettes for the other eleven women only to discover that the women written up for January is a Burmese activist for democracy and a Nobel Peace Prize winner. How did I get into this group?

Next I met Kimberly Fu’s father, David. He is an international broker for companies in Mexico, Taiwan, China, Canada, etc., providing communication structures so they can work cooperatively. At his invitation we talked for about 1 ½ hours – a rich gift in his framework. He gave me several insights into how to organize WPIT so that it is more sustainable, productive and understandable in the corporate world.

Next was the time spent on Skype with Liz Denny, an artist in Massachusetts who is also a PhD in Sociology and a grant writer. We are creating grant writing streams to bring $$’s to WPIT. She is our incipient financial office!

And although Peter C is mainly working in Canada his outlook is international. Tonight he was presenting several observations and resources to strengthen WPIT’s organizational power.

Of course I have been international since the mid-80’s – this is not really new. I just never have felt like I belonged in that sphere of influence. Yet clearly I do – I have evidence of my ideas and writing showing up in thirteen or fourteen countries, and physically I have been in seven. It’s now about me owning the reality.

Indeed, there is other evidence as well:
- advocating for individualized support with people from the UK, Germany, the US and Canada;
- participating on teleconferences that are Wisdom related with people in Canada, the US and more than one European country;
- helping to lead Summer Inclusion Institutes with a similar spread of participation, but also including the UK, the Netherlands, Russia, India, Australia and New Zealand; and,
- playing Farmville with over 27 million other Facebook members.

And, in addition, there are seventeen Wisdom Unlimited City Teams around the planet and I have been a City Team member since March 2003.

So I guess it’s about time I stepped into my own shoes!

January 11, 2011

Well there are days when the ball just won’t go between the posts! I was running late pretty well all day. Mike and I went to a consignment store this morning and there were some really great things but nothing in quite the right size. I got an email back from someone who had been asking good questions about WPIT but he declined to donate. I called some more people to be guests at the Wisdom Completion Evening this Thursday but just got message machines. Blah blah blah.

Perhaps the truly concerning “failure” was my need to use Morphine two days in a row. Jen did say there would be major shifts, and there have been. I do recognize it as one of those plateaus before a great step forward. Just the same, I am tired and sore, and kind of wishing I hadn’t booked myself such a busy week! But so it goes and I’m just venting, not really worried or complaining.

It is interesting how the quality of the questions and comments about WPIT as an organization and our projects are taking on a very more rich and serious (in a good sense) quality. I was Skyping with a colleague this evening and she completely bought into our need for a $6 million dollar foundation so that we can do our projects without constantly having our hands in somebody else’s pocket. She also was thinking about who, at the university level, might take on the kind of social/economic research that inclusion deserves. In a sense she is a “nobody” in the world of big money and research but life doesn’t work that way. Talking to her tonight makes it easier for me to talk to the Executive Director of ACF tomorrow, and on the other hand I have no idea who she knows or who knows who she knows. The message is travelling out and getting stronger as it goes.

In Wisdom we talk about fail, fail, failing your way to success. It very much feels like that is where I am at this time. It kind of makes it easier in a way because if lots of failure is the way to success then bring it on, bring it on, bring it on!

Of course, I hope that the failures are getting smarter as we go!

I feel like it’s been a very long time since I worked hard. I did not work hard at my jobs in the early and mid 90’s. The international travel was fun. The paid office stuff was excruciatingly boring and useless but not at all hard. The intense schedule and consistent phoning, writing, speaking that I’m doing now is considerably more difficult in the sense of leaving no room for fooling around, but it’s making a lot of sense and building a network and proving that I can be worthy of a team working with me. It is a very different life than Cycle 2.

Oh yes, I painted today. Well I didn’t actually paint. Mike and I spent about an hour preparing to paint. I am about to attempt reproducing a photograph of a scene outside my window – one of the scenes of the industrial and railway view outside my bedroom. It is a picture that I took during the last week that I spent most of my time in bed. It is very inclusive of all the elements that intrigue me about this view – the cranes, the trains and the sandbox quality of the scene.

At one point this morning I thought that I might not be able to paint today and keep up with all the other things I said I would do. I realized, though, that painting is once again going to disappear as a regular activity unless I stick to it in my schedule. Actually it’s amazing how much disappears when I (or anyone else!) doesn’t stick to the schedule. We talk about freedom of choice etc. But I chose all these things that are in my life and I chose them freely so having them disappear because I don’t keep my schedule is just some sort of insanity. I am free. I just have to remember that!

It’s been a long day. Tomorrow may be a big day if the meeting with Atkinson goes as well as it could! Time to pack it in!

January 9, 2011

As I was going to bed last night, Mike assisting, after staying up a little late to blog, I thought that the day had been so fulfilling, so replete with authentic experience, that I could happily die with no regrets. Well, I didn’t die. I awoke to a day of more video taping in my winter coat under camera lights, more Farmville, more apple pie, and beautiful sunshine. The vision out of my lake facing window was just like so many of those Christmas card scenes with brilliant sun shining on neat and even tiny houses with perfectly snow covered roof tops!

I got so tired today that I actually fell asleep momentarily during a pause in the taping. Just the same, finally, Michael, Sarah and I reached an ending to the play that we all are excited about. It is in the camera. The editing can happen. I do not have to travel with the play unless I want to.

At the same time I feel the pressure of how structured I am making my life again. Each of my chosen task areas could use whole days in and of themselves to “do” them with research and thoroughness. WPIT, painting, blogging, the ACF Inclusion Circle, travel and workshops, Wisdom Graduate Liaison, the Robert Cooke Coop, attending to the gifts and needs of my staff, not to mention the Individualized Funding envelope upon which we all depend, Farmville, time with my Dad, time watching pelicans and construction cranes – I can’t keep up with myself, and to just give each of them “a lick and a promise” (there’s my Mother again!) fills my day from 6:30am to 12:30am.

Yet I don’t seriously intend to change a thing. It’s all too rich!

A clone? Would it really give me “more time” or would I just expand to nearly burst two lives – not just one?

So often I feel like I never left off being four years old. I just want to play and eat. I do NOT want to go to bed no matter if I can’t stay awake long enough to get there. I want to get into everything, leave the messes to someone else and find out how everything works. And I never really mean to do harm.

Four is compelling and passionate, creative and fantastical, and NEVER reasonable. Four doesn’t have a style, a culture, a career, a financial plan, an ethic or a long memory. Four is optimistic. Four makes and loses friends easily, forgives easily and is easily forgiven. Four is able to bend a long, long way before breaking.

Four is also right on the edge of losing that openness, of becoming fearful, judgemental and certain, of narrowing the options and playing the game. It is nearly the moment to find out there is no Santa Claus.

Then it’s a long, long stretch until maybe, just maybe the adult becomes willing and able to be responsible for creating a world within which she and everyone she touches can be four again.

I want to be, and sometimes am, that adult. It is good!

January 6, 2011

I need to draft some stuff for the Executive Director of the Atkinson Charitable Foundation so I thought I’d start here.

The task is to equip her with enough compelling analysis and evidence in two hours so that she can activate her Board to take action on their Inclusion agenda.

What can the Board actually do to empower Inclusion? Their focus is on policy change. Where would policy change actually make Inclusion more likely to occur?

What would Inclusion look like? According to the BMX model:
- B – easier, more expected, even facilitated access for “targeted” individuals and groups to claim a space with little or no interaction required
- M – person centred and individualized services, citizen and economic development focus replaces welfare, charitable and health approaches
- X – broad recognition that everyone has differences that can foster interaction, relationship and so social and economic opportunity AND that the very characteristics that get turned into symptoms and excuses for labelling are potential for interaction, relationship and so social and economic opportunity

What happened to developing a common literacy about Inclusion.

To make the leap one must understand “Giftedness” – that is that gifts are anything you have, are or do that creates an opportunity for interaction and that interaction is fundamental to relationship and so social and economic opportunity. All differences are gifts.

Anyone who believes that either they themselves or anyone else is not what they should be already is in a trap.

Tell some stories.

Explain my organization bases and my history. Explain that recreating the same sort of organizations as already exist will automatically exclude most people who are labelled.

Excluded people LOOK like they are not contributing. This is a structural limitation.

Hospitality is a powerful stimulation for Basic Inclusion. What happened to revolutionary lunches?

Economics and Inclusion? We already said uneven labour market practices were founded in social exclusion. There is an inseparable link. This is a POLICY issue.

How ACF spends its money, and currently, if ACF spends its money, is a mark of its true values. In terms of X Inclusion, withholding its resources totally indicates no willingness to enter into genuine dialogue with those whose citizenship remains unexpressed.

November 25, 2010

It’s relatively early in the day. I usually write these near 11:30pm and it’s just past 11:30am. I have just heard momentous news, and I am going to be writing e-mails to friends and colleagues everywhere. I figure I may as well do it this way, and take parts of this and turn it into the e-mails later. It might save some Morse Code puffing!

I have just heard that my paintings and the play – The Book of Judith (http://bookofjudithplay.blogspot.com/) – are going to be exhibited at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM). I am to be a guest curator. The theme will be my legacy of Inclusion and my growing understanding and message portrayed as art, video and other interactive elements. After a stationary instalment in the museum itself, we will tour both the play and art. This will be in partnership with the Trillium Foundation who are already backing a spring and fall tour of The Book of Judith.

In all it’s a year’s commitment to celebrating Inclusion and diversity.

Michael Rubenfeld and Sarah Garton Stanley are integral to the creation, development, production and presentation of the play. We will be in close collaboration for all of it!

Even the World Peace through Inclusive Transformation will get a leg up as this theme and initiative are very much part of my legacy. Will I finally be able to get research backing for the BMX Model of Inclusion?

Recognition and the opening of doors come in quiet and unassuming ways. Yesterday included a last minute rearrangement of my schedule so I could participate in a teleconference with the ROM. It was no big deal – I am always rearranging my schedule last minute. Staff needed on the spot support to put a last minute proposal in front of the museum’s exhibit selection committee. Today I was in bed, getting ready to get up so the technician could fix the electronics of my bed. The call came and my future shifted.

It’s such an ordinary moment that my emotions haven’t caught up. I get what Mike was saying about meeting with the video game producers on Monday. It’s such an ordinary day, unlike a special day that one has been preparing for - a wedding or graduation - that the obvious next step is to go have lunch. The overall mood is so ordinary, so: “Well, of course – what else would we do except say yes.” In the absence of a big high it nearly feels like a low.

Yet I have been preparing for this day in one way or another since I was four – 57 years. I am coming home to a rightful place in the world. I don’t need a big high right now. I need to place myself firmly in the passion for Inclusion that has carried me through these 57 years. I need to fully feel and express my gratitude for the opening, for the many hands – seen and unseen – that have carried me to this day, and for the vision, energy and courage I have been given to keep on working the path when there was no sign that this future was realizable. Hallelujah!

Michael and I will be at the ROM on Monday for the first production meeting, to find out really what we need to do to set up the contracts, partnerships, etc. Then we will go have a beer. By then I think I will be ready to celebrate!

November 7, 2010

Today's post is a departure. I have had a GREAT deal of assistance from Mike Skubic in pulling together basic work for World Peace through Inclusive Transformation. I have spent much of my out-of-bed time working on an organizational summary today, SO,
I thought I will just share it with you today (rather than write ANOTHER 2 pages.

WPIT – World Peace through Inclusive Transformation

WPIT is a commitment to have people around the globe understand differences and develop skills so that peace is available to all. The sustainability of world peace will emerge when enough communities appreciate diversity as an asset and have the skills to build personal and social value from interacting effectively with differences.

In society, we often look at diversity as a source of problems – things to be fixed like gang conflicts or situations to be managed like sustaining mixed income neighbourhoods. We rarely look at diversity as a source of opportunity for everybody, except in relatively minimal ways like encouraging “ethnic” restaurants, funding mixed heritage cultural experiences or subsidizing an “alterative” movie industry.

If you ask a typical person how they would describe the community they are part of they would likely say it is a group of people who do the same thing – like my bridge club, or believe the same thing – like my church, or are attached geographically to the same place – my town. People haven’t been taught to look at how diversity is essential to community and every kind of interaction.

If we weren’t different from each other we wouldn’t have the need or capacity to interact. It is not just that interaction would be boring or useless. It would not be possible! It is differences that allow for the capacity to communicate. This is just one of the powerful gifts of diversity.

THE WPIT MISSION

Our mission is to have the concept of Giftedness appreciated everywhere. In addition we aim to have all peoples have the capacity to benefit from diversity so as to have social and economic abundance. This in turn will bring peace to communities everywhere – in other words – world peace.

Giftedness Defined

A gift is anything that you are, have or do which creates an opportunity for you to interact with someone else. Under favourable circumstances such interactions can then be built into sustainable relationships and social and economical opportunities.

Any difference is potentially a gift. If someone has black hair and they discover that some people have red hair, it may become for them an opportunity to dye their tresses. Out of many people acting to fulfill this desire an entire hairstyling industry can be built.
The diversities that get labelled as dangerous, awkward, socially incorrect and disabling, are also fundamentally simply differences and therefore potentially gifts.

In the Giftedness approach, the work of Inclusion is simply to create the circumstances under which people will see their differences as opportunities for each other and know how to fulfill these opportunities.
Interestingly and importantly, when people adopt a Gifted perspective they also become more peaceful. This is simply because they have developed the skills to be creative with diversity and they are also conscious of the social and economic benefits that are being made available. There is less impulse to fight and do harm when there is nothing to fear and everything to gain.
When the world has people experience the concept of Giftedness in everyday life the result will be Inclusion and this will foster peacefulness. This connection between Inclusion and peace is at the heart of what we stand for.

Integral to inclusion is the development of creative and unique social and economic opportunities in local communities. It is a fundamental part of our mission to have Inclusion experienced as a multidimensional set of interactions where creativity can be expressed and to foster sustainable social and economic experiments.

OBJECTIVES

One of WPIT’s key objectives is to research the BMX Model of Inclusion and to have it taught as a practical model for social and economical development.

The BMX Model of Inclusion

We propose that three distinct states of Inclusion co-exist. Neither is better than the other, but often there is an emergent pull to move from one state to another. We are calling these states B, M, and X:

 State B (Basic): Groups allow the presence of people with diverse characteristics. State B’s principal quality is that the includers share presence with diversity, but no other changes are anticipated or offered. The includers like their community as is, expect no major shifts, and the included are expected to adapt to the ways and means of the includers and to get along as best they can. Typically the included express gratitude for the opportunity and work hard to not cause difficulties.

 State M (Mechanical): Includers recognize that the included are struggling to get along, and are willing to make “accommodations”. The included move beyond simply being grateful for the opportunity to coexist and begin to advocate for support. For example, service providers currently tend to segregate individuals with cognitive challenges and the professionalization of supporters tends to turn citizens into helpers and volunteers instead of friends and colleagues.

 State X (Crossover): Both includers and the included recognize that another world is possible, one that benefits from the gifts and contributions available in the cultures, characteristics, and experiences of members of both the including and included groups. The perception fades that there are two sides and a distinct boundary.

Operationalizing the BMX Model:

State B (Basic) A teenager with autism and no speech is kept at the back of a regular classroom, with no attention paid to whether he is building friendships.

State M (Mechanical) All teenagers with “disability” labels are given opportunities to be in a homeroom for 1st period. The school has a resource room for tutoring, an “inclusive” lunchroom, and Special Olympics classes to replace regular gym.

State X (Crossover) Ninth grade students are invited to form a support circle with a teen who loves music, and who also has autism and no speech. Twenty-three students respond. They meet regularly and enthusiastically at different points in their day and week for the next four years. The teen who focuses the circle enjoys participating in the school band, gym and many more classes than anyone originally expected. The other teens express their appreciation at having an alternative to being “Nerds”, “Preps” or simply left out. The school administration notes a dramatic decrease in fights and vandalism.

Another WPIT key objective is to see POISA projects grow communities locally and around the globe.
The Peaceful Open Inclusive Spaces Alliance (POISA)
POISA arises from the experience that communities, work places, schools, etc. can become more peaceful when people of diverse backgrounds come together in ways that draw on diversity as a social asset rather than a liability, and where people are free and supported to create and shape their own activities. The future of POISA is to teach people that Inclusion makes peace possible, to foster the sustainable development of real examples of POISA and to have strategic buy-in around the world. People will come to expect their world to be made up of such spaces.

PEACEFUL  Having the capacity to resolve conflict to the benefit of all concerned
OPEN  Participants shape their own agendas and activities
INCLUSIVE  Diversities among participants are welcome and drawn on as valuable resources
SPACES  Locations, contexts, and rules and principles that give participants a safe and facilitative bounded area within which to generate their activities
ALLIANCE  Agreements between organizations and individuals to work together to create and preserve a valued experience

On the ground POISA is a complex process of community development consisting of:
 the development of a community’s principles of Open Space
 supporting the community’s invitation process to become more diverse
 capturing the learnings as the community becomes more peaceful
 facilitating story telling that deepens the community’s ability to be diverse and peaceful

WPIT HISTORY

Judith Snow has done groundbreaking work throughout her life to have people notice and appreciate the contributions of people who are labelled disabled. She has travelled and taught that, rather than being problems to fix or hide, the differences we call disabilities create a context for relationship and community building and for greater social and economic sustainability. Over time she developed a storehouse of examples of peace making through Inclusion drawn from fields such as education, health care, community development and economics.

In the mid ‘90’s, Judith Snow realized that Inclusion of diversities, if they are appreciated as gifts and contributions, creates the context for people to become peaceful.

WPIT was born when Judith Snow, Gabor Podor, Erin Socall and Jason Wiles toured several states for seven months, speaking with and learning from others who were transforming fear of differences into passion to build social and economic sustainability.

At this time WPIT is conceived as an umbrella organization, seeding and guiding other initiatives and projects that look very different from each other, but which have the common characteristics of being able to teach people and have them build from their differences in ways that foster sustainable relationships, abundance and peacefulness.

PROJECTS

WPIT WORLD PEACE TOURS
In 2008, Judith Snow, Gabor Podor, Erin Socall and Jason Wiles began on an exploration throughout the United States and Canada. This 7 month journey took them deep into the heart of a learning and engagement experience. They worked together with many people who were creatively dealing with deep exclusion in their own lives. From the stories and experiences of the people met along the way, the BMX model of inclusion was developed.

This journey gave the evidence that peace really is available through Inclusion. To experience some of the stories for yourself, you can read the blog from the tour at http://peaceforinclusion.blogspot.com/

The World Peace Tour is scheduled to go back on the road in early 2011 officially launching WPIT’s 2011 projects and spreading Inclusion everywhere it goes. Locations on the current timeline range from Ontario, Minnesota, Georgia, New York and Arizona.

THE “DO SOMETHING GOOD” CAMPAIGN
The Do Something Good campaign is a movement founded by Kimberly Fu in 2005 to get people involved in the community during the holiday season. It started as a simple trip to the Salvation Army with some friends and has now expanded into co-ordinating visits to many different locations and service centres to do many different kinds of tasks. This is an opportunity for people to give from their own gifts to people who are in need. The opportunity appeals especially to people who have always wanted to help but had no idea where to start.

Originally the campaign operated just during the holiday season but now we are functional from early October to the end of the winter season. People aren't required to volunteer for the whole 4 months - whatever can be mustered is perfectly okay. Doing something good can be small or can be large, just as long as the opportunity is there to do something!

There is no reason why we have to restrict ourselves to just the holidays. We hope that every year we will grow in numbers, so we can make this a year-round campaign.

WPIT GAMES
The fastest growing sector in the entertainment industry is video games, surpassing both movies and music combined in 2008, and just like movies and music, the themes in games do not always provide the players with the very best social messages. Imagine the power of fostering peace and reinforcing it through game play!
WPIT Games is a project to do just that. By creating a series of fun, Inclusion themed video games we are generating a community of online gamers who come to a website on a daily basis and are reinforced with themes of diversity and Giftedness. We are expecting that this learning will play out in the rest of their lives, giving gamers a background to act in more Inclusive ways.

We are in the process of creating an alliance with several game development companies for this project, both upstart companies and big businesses. In this way we can tap into the large audience that bigger developers can offer while working with new, unshaped game creators.

Our first project is on track to be released online in early 2011, in time to be entered as part of the 2011 Games 4 Change Festival in New York City.

Examples of On-the-Ground WPIT Projects
Do Something Good 2010 Events
The Brown Bag Drive

Do Something Good is launching the Brown Bag Drive this year, where we will be putting together several large brown bags full of clothes and toiletries for people who are homeless and delivering it downtown during the day, along with a brown bag meal.

Other Current Opportunities
- Toy sorting
- Serving meals to people who are homeless via a shelter/church
- Gift wrapping
- Visiting the elderly/sick kids
- Participating in at-risk youth events
- Food drive sorting

COMMUNITY POT-LUCKS – A POISA PROJECT

The Robert Cooke Community Movement
As a step in building community at the Robert Cooke Housing Co-operative, we are providing space for the members to meet for the purposes of making visible the gifts of everyone in the co-op community—families and singles, young and old, vulnerable people; in other words—everyone. This will support the elements of a satisfying life for all co-op members.

The concept is that each floor comes together for pot-lucks (a meal where everyone brings something to share) so that the residents on every floor in the high-rise and the townhouses can share a space together for socializing. Along with the space—drinks, food and help in facilitating the evening for both adults and children are provided by the people on the floor.
The first pot-luck gathering took place on October 30th 2010 for everyone on the 8th Floor and it was a great success.

Robert Cooke Housing Co-operative operates under the assumption that in community people turn to one another. Everyone has something to give. Together, we operate out of 5 core principles:
1: Assets: Everyone has something to give;
2: Work: Building home and community is real, important work,
3: Reciprocity: Giving is stronger when it’s more than a one-way street,
4: Community: We’re stronger together, and
5: Respect: We deserve it from others – and we owe it to others.

We are making no claims to change anything. What we are doing is setting up a means for people who live in a neighbourhood to come together to tell their personal story. Anybody can throw a party or arrange a pot-luck.. It is the design of this gathering that sets this project apart and makes it a POISA project. The goal of POISA and this project is to develop a model of gathering that educates the participants to the power of Inclusion.

LOOKING FORWARD

From the mid 90’s to 2010, one person’s (Judith Snow) realization that peace can be available through Inclusion has developed into an international collective of projects and activities. We have grown from discussion groups and celebrations into the beginnings of sustainable organization.

For this dream to stay alive, we must continue to put down deep roots into cultures everywhere, especially so that young people will see the opportunity and lend their energy and creativity to the work.

Now is the time for WPIT to emerge as “real”. This will happen as many people join the commitment and the efforts. The question that must be answered now is: “Are you – as an individual or a corporation – are you willing to build World Peace through Inclusion?” If so, please join us in whatever way makes sense to you.

November 5, 2010

Since the subject of my death has come up three times this week, I guess I’ll write about it now.

This morning my masseuse Jen brought it up in terms of a question. She asked me if I was resisting my death. She also asked me how long I expected to live, and a number of other questions in the same vein. Later today when three good friends visited – Gloria, Franziska and Mary – Gloria raised the topic again. As is typical between Gloria and I the subject of death comes up around the long struggle had by herself, her husband Peter, her son Scott’s many friends and Scott himself to ensure that he lived a good life in the face of his many physical frailties. This was so especially in the face of a culture that strongly reinforces the idea that a young who is deaf and blind and physically quite fragile is of no particular value and ought to have the decency to pass away quickly.

Earlier this week, the subject was raised by another friend who was visiting a friend of hers who is close to death from stomach cancer. She is suggesting that it might be valuable for me to be interviewed by people who provide palliative support, and for me to do more research in this area.

It is curious to me. It is not that I think that I’m actually dying right now. Of course who knows? But what’s curious is that the question of my imminent death has been a shadow in my life since as early as I can remember. It seems that the shadow is shifting to confront me and for me to confront it. Is this because of my age, my current physical state or is it because my friends recognize that the shadow is some sort of limitation in my well-being?

In Cycle 1, there were a number of predictions about my early demise because the then current medical experience with spinal muscular atrophy was that the muscular deterioration that is the major symptom of the syndrome seemed to be relentless and unstoppable, leading in every case to a terminal incapacity to breathe. When I was in my late teenage years, I was firmly told by a medical expert that even though I had lived passed 2, 4, 6 and 12 years of age I would certainly not make it to 30. (By the way, that medical expert is long dead.)

Hence the beginning of the pattern that now leads me to refer to my life in cycles of 30. The story is now famous of my leaving a chronic care institution on the cusp of my 30th birthday, expecting to die within weeks, only to discover that the major source of my illness in the hospital was an allergy to red dyes. I quickly recovered my health, lived past 30, and invented along with the Joshua Committee, my support circle, individualized funding for personal assistants. This huge battle had to be fought and won so that I wouldn’t have to return to the institution.

The next 30 years would see me bringing the ideas of relationship building, gifted capacity, inclusion and much more to the area that usually gets called “disability.”

But, as I said in yesterday’s writing, there was another hidden agenda – at least hidden from me – that lead me to leave a paying job, go on a search for stories about inclusion, and lead to a gradually debilitating series of crises that pretty much began around my 60th birthday. It is fascinating to me that even though I can see the pattern of 30 times 2, I could not see nor deflect the process that lead to my recent near death experience.

But a now a new space is open. I have seen that it is possible for me to enter into a new relationship with my own physical body. I have seen that I can have and explore the experiences of fun, comfort and health, and not solely be driven by an intense desire to contribute to the world and transform the discourse of Inclusion.

And so people are questioning me, and encouraging me to not deny that the issue of my own death causes me to push past personal and cultural limits. Of course, this is not by any means a bad thing. However, it is a costly thing and now is a good time to explore the cost as well as the benefit to me and to others.

What Jen was asking me: “Are you resisting your death?” My answer to her was: “I think that it’s more that I’m unsure whether I’m willing to die.” Perhaps it’s the same thing.

I am more sure now than I ever have been that my life has been valuable to others and that I have made a real contribution. This came out of the first few days of the illness when I asked the question: “Has the message been delivered?” And the answer was a clear yes. This is where the space has opened – I am no longer driven by a sense that I have a job to do and that I can’t die until it’s done.

But, can I live without being haunted by the certain knowledge that someday I will die? Can it just be a knowing without being a prod or a ghost?

Of this I am not yet sure.

November 2, 2010

Well God saved us.

I came home without a catheter and without a PICC line. The doctors and technicians were very responsive, Helen was funny and anxious, and Lorraine was steady and responsive. Although parts of the test were uncomfortable mostly it went off without a hitch. We discovered that my bladder has FULLY recovered after a rest of 5 weeks and is free both from infections and stones. Throughout the day I have peed in the usual way without difficulty and I seem to be home free on that account.

Having had such a positive outcome Helen and I decided to go off to St. Mike’s and see if we could round up Dr. Ray and get permission to take the PICC line out. Both doctors at the eurodynamics clinic said they were not permitted to do so. As I found my way to the Ambulatory Clinic Dr. Ray and I ran into each other. He took me to a room and simply removed the PICC line himself – all ten purple inches of it. I am no longer tethered to medical equipment. I am free. I am no longer sick. I am still in pain, but not as much.

At lunch in the cafeteria I ran into our buddy from the 14th floor, the nutrition researcher, Stanley. Perhaps I will take another time in the near future and write more about him – I realize that there was a lot that went on in the hospital that none of the readers of these two pagers will know about. Stanley was a real breath of fresh air during those difficult nine days. Besides taking data from me about my eating habits as I recovered he took a real interest in my life, my assistants, my circle and my art. He spent many more five minute periods with me than data collection required and even went out of his way to help us find palatable food when the nausea was at its worst.

We sat at his table, shared lunch and talked about his research. He asked me a lot of questions about my daily life and became more and more inspired by the kooky life that I live. Later, Lorraine suggested that I invite him to my circle and I think that is a very, very fine idea.

Then it was off to Laser Eagles. When I arrived most everybody was there and even Greg had shown up although it had been predicted that his Wheeltrans would have been cancelled. We talked painting, we talked fundraising – it was clear that new life has been breathed into this enfeebled collective. By 2:30pm I was exhausted and needed to go buy a knee brace due to the fact that I managed to twist my knee during the bladder test. In spite of this crash at the end of a miraculous day I remain pretty up beat. Truly the prayers of many, many have been answered.

As I returned to bed Mike hung out to write some more for the upcoming WPIT website. My tongue was “loosened” as they say. I told him and Helen a couple of stories from the World Peace through Inclusion Tour. I went on to talk about the years of struggle before the Tour was envisioned working for the service system that led me to an abrupt decision to take off and explore inclusion. At one point I regretted that Mike wasn’t typing because it could have been my two pager for today. Alas, he was not focused on me but on the website. Someday soon I will begin to record some of these stories.

I realize just how much I am not dying at this point. Although I am uncertain that I can pick up life as it was – that would be silly considering how stressful and unhealthy it turned out to be – I am full of energy and desire to live an exciting life. Whether it be writing stories, Laser Eagles, WPIT, friends, Wisdom, walks in the parks by the lake, amazing food, trips to the Lebanese café a few blocks away, letting my father buy me a greasy spoon lunch, or bantering with one or more of my personal assistants – life is rich and longing to be lived!

October 23, 2010

This is for my dearest friend Lorraine. She has been keeping the medical side of this journey on a path of integrity, along with the efforts of my other dear friend Bill Worrel. I’m sure that any quirkiness of the system will be defeated by these two intrepid individuals.

Lorraine has heard me speak of the BMX Model of Inclusion. Today we realized that the thinking behind it may in fact be of some use to her in her public health career. I promised to send her something in writing.

Searching my documents I realized – yet once again – that I have spoken at length and done power point presentations about BMX Inclusion but I have not written anything substantive about it. It’s amazing how much goes on inside my head!

Here’s an excerpt from a draft research proposal:

The BMX Model of Inclusion I propose that three distinct states of Inclusion co-exist. Neither is better than the other, but often there is an emergent pull to move from one state to another. I am calling these states B, M, and X:

 State B (Basic): Groups allow the presence of people with diverse characteristics. State B’s principal quality is that the includers share presence with diversity, but no other changes are anticipated or offered. The includers like their community as is, expect no major shifts, and the included are expected to adapt to the ways and means of the includers and to get along as best they can. Typically the included express gratitude for the opportunity and work hard to not cause difficulties.

 State M (Mechanical): Includers recognize that the included are struggling to get along, and are willing to make “accommodations”. The included move beyond simply being grateful for the opportunity to coexist and begin to advocate for support. For example, service providers currently tend to segregate individuals with cognitive challenges and the professionalization of supporters tends to turn citizens into helpers and volunteers instead of friends and colleagues.

 State X (Crossover): Both includers and the included recognize that another world is possible, one that benefits from the gifts and contributions available in the cultures, characteristics, and experiences of members of both the including and included groups. The perception fades that there are two sides and a distinct boundary.

Operationalizing the BMX Model:

State B (Basic) A teenager with autism and no speech is kept at the back of a regular classroom, with no attention paid to whether he is building friendships.

State M (Mechanical) All teenagers with “disability” labels are given opportunities to be in a homeroom for 1st period. The school has a resource room for tutoring, an “inclusive” lunchroom, and Special Olympics classes to replace regular gym.

State X (Crossover) Ninth grade students are invited to form a support circle with a teen who loves music, and who also has autism and no speech. Twenty-three students respond. They meet regularly and enthusiastically at different points in their day and week for the next four years. The teen who focuses the circle enjoys participating in the school band, gym and many more classes than anyone originally expected. The other teens express their appreciation at having an alternative to being “Nerds”, “Preps” or simply left out. The school administration notes a dramatic decrease in fights and vandalism.

The BMX stages are not only descriptive of the world of ability. I’ve had the good fortune to be part of inclusion conversations involving leaders from other cultural areas where inclusion is an issue, such as non English speaking women immigrating to Toronto, and for Aboriginal peoples who often are viewing their situation as one of chronically dealing with invaders.

A B example is of a Rastafarian man who, as part of his cultural practice continuously wears a hat in public. He was invited to a wedding of a more or less traditional Christian congregation and was told by the ushers upon entering the church building that he would be required to remove his hat. He stepped outside and prepared to wait until the ceremony was over, but in the meantime the ushers gathered together and decided that they can make an exception in his case. One stepped out and invited the man back in requesting only that he wait at the back, and he did so.

The strength of B is that neither the includers nor the included are required to give up their unique identities. Many individuals and groups are quite content with B stage inclusion.

The strength of M inclusion is that it gathers a momentum and an impulse for equality. That is to say that people come to believe that if this situation is good for one person than it must be good for everybody. Large scale, even world wide, changes take place in order to make something about M available to all who fit the appropriate characteristics.

A non ability related example of M is ESL classes. In North America perhaps in the 50’s or thereabouts, some schools discovered that making an effort to intentionally support immigrating students to learn English could lead many of them to take full advantage of public school education as they graduated and/or went into adult education. In a short period of time ESL was offered automatically, even forced upon, students as newcomers to Canada.

However under M one’s personal identity is obliterated in favour of whatever characteristics set you apart. A good friend of mine who is a retired high school teacher told me a story of a brother and sister who had been placed in ESL classes in her school. This was no problem at all for the brother. He progressed in a typical manner through ESL to regular class to graduate in a non academic stream. However, his sister had a dream of becoming a medical doctor. She immediately recognized that a placement in ESL would not get her to an academic level where she would be taken seriously as a potential medical student. Somehow she got the ear of my friend who worked against her own high school staff the get the student out of ESL, some extra support, and placement into the more intensive academic stream. That young student in now a gynaecologist.

There is no question that the M approach to inclusion is powerful and effective. Its tendency to obliterate identity, however, in some respects defeats its fundamental purpose.

And so people long for the X or the crossover approach or stage of inclusion.

Small communities often exhibit creative approaches to differences that become quite stable, especially if nobody makes a big deal of them. In my youth there was very little interchange between groups of different faiths, and yet people worked out the economic strategies that made life easier for each other. For example, the staffing of the convenience stores in town would look something like this: mixed from Monday to Thursday, Christian on Friday, Muslim on Saturday and Jewish on Sunday. Everybody gets his or her appropriate day off for religious celebration and everybody gets to have the stores open all week long. Part of the characteristic of X is that the management of it is invisible. Whereas M is very policy driven X is driven by self interest and on the spot creativity.

Nobody has the energy or the desire to be X all the time. It doesn’t hurt to have some of the basics of life run by policy, and at the B level most of us want to just get on with our day to day life without making issues of things. So clearly a mix of BMX in any individuals or groups experience can be optimized so that inclusion sheds its benefits for all.

And finally, this is where the tendency towards peace making comes in. In any community or any individual’s life an appropriate mix of B, M and X irradiates any need or incentive for strife. In other words as people learn to engage in value creation around diversity they experience a genuine alternative to fear and defensiveness when faced with differences in others.